"About 1914 CE"?

I have no doubt that this has been raised here before, so please excuse my laxness.

At pages 1766 and 1767 of the 2013 NWT, the WTS lays out God's "right to rule".

I notice that it does not make any statement about God's kingdom starting to rule in 1914 CE. Instead the only comment regarding that year is that it says the serpent was hurled to earth "about" 1914 CE.

Is this a shift, or not?

By "about" do they mean before or after?

What do they mean by "the serpent being hurled to earth"? Where was it living? Was it not on earth before?

If the word "confining" is a key, where was the serpent able to go and live up to "about 1914"?

I know this is fairy tale stuff that stretches credulity. I am simply wondering why they have a section on "God's rule" yet they appear to bypass their previous position on 1914, making only a glancing statement to something they think happened "about" 1914.

That ommission could be very revealing indeed. It could be an indication that the governing body has already come to the decision of discarding the 1914 invisible presence doctrine sometime in the future. At the very least they have some doubt about the doctrine and don't want to risk putting it in the bible only to have to revise the bible again in the not too distant future. Maybe they're going to discard the whole 7 gentile times - 1914 nonsense but keep the year 1914 as only marking the time when satan was cast out, pointing to WWI as being the foretold woe that Revelation talks about.

The fact that they say "about 1914 CE" reveals they are somewhat tentative about the date, or that they are aware that WWI broke out before the time that Jesus supposedly started to reign. Not stating too much about 1914 could also be due to the fact that they are thinking of the fact that the new bible will also be distributed to interested ones in the ministry, and you know how cults tend not to give potential new recruits too much info about their peculiarly outlandish doctrines.